Monday, November 29, 2010

Squirrels Haunt My Dreams

Hi, my name's Charley. I recently started running, and I'm not great at it yet, but it's coming along. My long run is currently seven miles, but I'm getting to the point where I can run most days without getting sore.

Anyway, I wanted to post a question here since I know some of you guys are more experienced than I am. I'm almost embarrassed to ask it, since it's probably going to seem like it's coming out of left field, but my question has to do with squirrels. Every time I see a squirrel on a run, I have to dart after him. Does this happen to anyone else?

Some background. After pooping in the backyard and eating my morning bowl of Kibbles'n'Bits earlier today, I gave some thought to why I feel such aggression when it comes to squirrels. When I was really young, I asked my mom about where milk comes from. She said that her milk comes from the food she eats. When I asked when I would be able to eat real dog food, she told me that I'd have to wait until I was older. But it wasn't what she said that was striking; it was more the way that she said it. She couldn't look me straight in the eye, but instead had this far off expression on her face. Later that night, I overheard her having an argument with my dad.

"Goddamnit Mona, why'd you have to bring it up at all? Lord knows you can't make promises like that! Not in this economy!"

"Pokey, I didn't say anything! He asked me a question, and I did the best I could to answer him."

"If only those damn squirrels didn't control 90% of the world's money, we'd be able to ensure that our son would be able to get a steady job and put food on the table..."

There's a saying down South, where I'm from: Rats are rats, pigeons are rats with wings, and squirrels are rats with good PR. But local cultural bias aside, after that fateful night, I did some research of my own about the origins of squirrels and their insatiable greed. Long story short, it turned out that my dad was a raging anti-Squirreletic and that in truth, squirrels had been wrongly oppressed for centuries. Still, somewhere deep down in a dark corner where my rational mind could not freely go, I cultivated a deep hatred for all things squirrel.

What bothers me most is that I can't outwardly control this hatred. As a long-standing Dixiecrat who has pushed for social equality at every turn in my young life (simultaneously jawing with our household's staunchly conservative Stuff Pierre whenever his obstructionist opinion surfaces), it just eats me up that I'm still chasing squirrels. As I said at the start of this post, my distraction has started to infringe on my progress toward a healthier lifestyle, as I can't seem to stay on a steady pace whenever I see one of those goddamned shit-dwelling, nut-sequestering rats.

Can anyone help me?

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Never again


Here, if you look closely, you can see Seidel in blue on the right side (wearing only the singlet). My head, protruding from a red shirt, is a few feet behind him. I briefly overtook the race about a quarter of a mile in, but lost it on the hill and never regained.

Oddly enough the photographer didn't make it to the finish line to capture Will's victory, but he did manage to capture the 8th place finisher. There is something about the celebration.


As an interesting aside, this race was held in 19 degree temperatures. In NYC, the day before, the temperature had been 60 degrees.

On a completely unrelated note, I had a professor at Penn who talked a lot about raising a son in Philadelphia as a single mother. Then, she came in in the winter between 2006-2007 and was real upset about some trouble that her son had gotten into in Atlanta. Gradually, we figured out that her son was DJ Drama, and that she was upset because of his arrest over copyright infringement.

Monetizing and Designitizing



My second favorite blog has recently gotten me thinking about exploiting MàT's cashflow capabilities in some way. It's a no-brainer. For those of you too lazy to click on the link in the lead sentence, Zoo with Roy (the owner of which is an accountant somewhere outside of Philadelphia) has been selling tee-shirts, some of which I don't even understand, and making loads of bank.

Here are some ways I've thought about making money through this site:

1) Selling the socks we've used in training for our marathon.
2) Making and selling a number one rap song.
3) Advertising Natalie's services as a wet nurse.
4) Porn. (The title obviously lends itself to this.)
5) Tee-shirts and/or jerseys

This last option brings me to the second theme of this post, namely that of design. You'll all notice that the background and color scheme have gone through somewhat of a transformation since the last time you stopped by. I think the reasons for both are obvious, but if you're confused then you should read/watch Ross's last post.

That being said, I will be making jerseys and potentially a new line of running shoes (still need to get James on board for this last idea) for our epic run. Here is a sketch of where my head is at. Think of it is more of a brainstorm than anything else. I'm anxious to get your feedback.


PS - Still on the design front, I fargled up the font settings in such a way that our Week 1 Recap looks retarded. If either of you guys can fix this, I'll give you a thousand dollars.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Week 2 Recap

Add your recap of the week's running.

Sambo: 36 for the week -- 7 with the dog on Sunday (tired him out accidentally), 6M, 6T, 4W, Turkey Trot on Thursday in 17 minutes for third place and a turkey, off Friday, and 5 today. Long run tomorrow. Misplaced my early ambition sometime this afternoon since I was originally thinking about running twice today. Christmas spirit has surfaced with the wife.

HALL: 32 for the week -- S: 5 M: 5 T: 4 W: off T: Turkey Trot (humiliating loss to Will) 8 miles F: 5 S: 5. Motivation was low after my defeat to Slow-del, dripping tears mixed with my turkey, but I owe a big thank you to Ross for "Black and Yellow." The song had hardly ended before I nearly ran through the door of my apartment.

RO$$: Sorry for the late update. I spent the weekend in Nashville crawling around with babies. Air travel is the pits. Here's my week as best as I can remember. S: 7, M:7, T biked 9, W: biked 9, R: 0, F: 7, S: 0.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

The Return of Rap Video Reviews!

No endeavor can be more rewarding than doggedly working alongside a close group of friends toward the goal of achieving everlasting greatness. Who can say for sure how this marathon experiment will turn out, but my sense of optimism is bolstered by the fact that this threesome can draw upon a prior experience where cooperation led to excellence. No, not the track and field conference championships, because I had absolutely nothing to do with any of those. What I refer to, obviously, is the Cornell cross country team's message board from the summer of 2003.

Created by Sam in an attempt to maintain contact with his teammates while living in self-imposed exile in Boulder, Colorado, the CUXC message board is still reverently discussed in hushed tones by internet scholars and übergeeks the world over. (Conversely, the name of Forrest Dillaway, a computer science major who commandeered the message board the following summer and made a bunch of promises about how awesome everything was going to be, only to violently run the entire operation into the ground, has become synonymous with the term epic fail.) 

The message board scaled some stratospheric heights. Sam's epochal STERILE! post, which has served as the impetus for countless university seminars, immediately leaps to mind. The message board was also unafraid to examine the inherently flawed nature of humanity, as avid readers will recall the unfortunate chain of events revolving around an incoming freshman's belief that no soil on Earth was more fertile for the planting of the gay rights movement's seeds than the web forum of a mediocre college cross country team. (Oh, crap. I may have just alienated this blog's entire readership. Hi, Will!) But the enduring strength of the message board lay in its contributors' collective documentation of an overlooked yet crucial era in American history. Gordon's meticulous, surrealistic portrait of a summer spent painting handrails and running through the fetid manure farms of Pennsylvania's Amish country, for example, has been favorably compared to the oeuvre of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

My humble contributions to the message board consisted largely of reviews of that summer's most frequently aired rap videos on BET. Were those reviews truly unparalleled exemplars of cultural observance and criticism, as so many have gone on to claim? While the acclaim continues to flatter, it is not my place to say. What I will say is that to have been a part of that message board continues to stand as my most treasured accomplishment. I can only hope that this video review lives up to the board's lofty standards.

Now . . . . 

I had no choice but to review this video, as the marathon's directors have announced that this song will be blaring on loop across the City of Champions, to be heard clearly on every mile of the course, throughout the entirety of race day. 

Once the Steelers and Penguins won championships in the same year, there was only one thing left for me to achieve in this world: Have a rapper from Pittsburgh become wildly popular and take over the hip hop game. Since he broke onto the scene at age 17, native Champions like myself have fervently believed that Wiz Khalifa might prove to be the chosen one, but I must be honest, I'd begun to lose hope when the ingenious Alice Deejay-sampling "Say Yeah" didn't shoot straight to number one. 

But good things come to those who wait, as 2010 has pretty much been the Year of Wiz. "Black and Yellow" is the first single from his upcoming album on Atlantic records, and it's quickly become this decade's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in terms of perfectly articulating the collective angst and aspirations of today's youth. It's already launched a new genre of rap videos called Awesome Videos Where Everyone Constantly Waves Terrible Towels Around. Best of all, every time Ray Lewis hears this song, he assumes the fetal position and sobs uncontrollably like a biggity bitch. 

So, Gordon and Sam, be sure watch this video before every training run, and we'll probably all qualify for the Olympic Trials. You know what it is.

Postscript: Readers, I know what you're thinking: "RO$$, I've watched the video like twenty-five times already, and I didn't see you anywhere. What's up with that?" Unfortunately, I had prior commitments the weekend the video was filmed. But for those who would twist my absence from "Black and Yellow" into some sort of evidence that I'm not the high priest of the Church of Wiz that I claim to be, check out this interview, where Wiz specifically mentions me shortly after the 1:40 mark:

Monday, November 22, 2010

Semi-pertinent

This video combines Gordon's recent activity with Ross's and my honeymoon destination. I thought I'd share since the music and cinematography alone are worth a click, and that's not even getting into the sweet tricks.




HALL: I hadn't had the chance to view this video, and I did, today. Sam, how did you come across this?
I can't believe this guy still has a tailbone.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Week 1 Recap

Add your recap of the week's running.

Sambo: About 35 miles with an 11.5 mile long-run today to close out the week, and a Boston Cream donut to cancel out the long run. No tempos or any of that shit. If I could summarize Week 1 in one word, that word would be "houp-doup."

Ro$$: Last week I ran 5 miles on Monday, biked about 12 miles on Thursday, and ran 8 today. I'm not terribly worried at this point, so long as your comment about running 2:45 was a joke.

HALL: Week 1 - Blah. I am still in recovery from the NYC marathon - which means no running. I biked 10 miles Monday - Friday, and I lifted weights on Sunday and Wednesday. So, 50 miles of nothing, but I did add more weight to my biceps and pectorals.

It's Like Writing a Good Blog Entry -- You Just Do It

I've tortured myself for a full week now over what my initial contribution to this momentous blog should be, and while I've got some ideas, I kept thinking back to how Sam's first entry included that great video, which so far has provided me with more inspiration to get out there and train than all of Robert and Coach Taylor's speeches combined and then multiplied by seven. 

All credit must go to Sam for taking this group running endeavor and turning it into a group writing endeavor, but, the extremely accomplished wordsmith that I am -- after all, I once wrote a column about Mario Kart DS for a college newspaper -- I feel that the burden of providing writing-related inspiration falls upon me.

So, Sam and Gordon, I encourage you to heed these words each and every time you sit down to type out another timeless entry for Marathon a Trois:

Friday, November 19, 2010

Dog is Running Marathon

OK. He's not really running the marathon, but we're up to 2 miles in the mornings for the past two days. Still horribly behaved off the leash.

My cold is still hanging around, which is crazy, but long run is in the works for this weekend. What are you two starting at mileage-wise?

In news related to the title of this post, I saw this piece of shit when I googled somesuch language about marathoning dogs. A Guinness record for being dressed like a mascot? As world records go, 4:30 f'ing sucks. I don't care if you're wearing 30 pounds of fur; you should be able to run faster than that. I'm tempted to go out and by a Phillie Phanatic costume for Pittsburgh.


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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Charley Update

This morning, I wanted to give everyone an update on the training partner. After a few days of brisk walking, Charley (we decided it's spelled this way because he was Harley when we got him from the kennel) has improved a lot in the speed department. I've worked him up from short fartlek style training to this morning's run of about 1.5 miles. My goal is for him to be able to run at least 6 miles with me, so that morning runs are that much easier, though I'm starting to think that he could eventually handle more.

Living in a wire crate can't be good for the joints. I'm not sure how long he's been cooped up, but I imagine it's been for a while. I can't think he would have gone straight from some irresponsible person's home to a kill shelter to Helping Hounds in Syracuse over the course of a week.

Natalie is still not entirely sold on keeping Charley, and I don't blame her. I would really like the decision to be mutual, even if I am getting more enamored with him each day. One option would be to keep him long-term and see if Becky would want him at a later date. He really is a great dog!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Training Partner?


Natalie and I went to the dog shelter today and brought home a new pooch who was two days away from being gassed somewhere down south. When we asked why the south had so many dogs that were being gassed, we didn't get a clear answer, so feel free to comment if you know. I'm guessing it has something to do with y'all's all's opinions on capital punishment.

We've named him Charlie, adding a 'C' to his motorcycle themed gas chamber given name. Naturally, this is in honor of baseball's greatest manager. I'm not sure if Charlie's actually going to work out as a training partner, since he's more into sleeping than running, but for now, he's working out well as a foster addition to the family. It's possible that he has the flu since I slept four 12 hours last night myself. The snoozing could also be a result of the crazy intense stress, too, so we're giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Stuffy Pierre is very interested in eating his grub and vice versa. It's topsy-turvy day!

PS - Day 2 of no running/flu recovery for me.

PPS - N. and I ate waffles this morning. They were delicious as always. Great wedding present.
Sam's been really hammering the multimedia. So, I thought I'd show how a jacked bike-man, like myself, gets on a bicycle.

Biking is fun, but womanly

I hadn't put a lot of thought into what would happen after the marathon. I think that I assumed it'd be like an extended road race. I'd take some time off for soreness: about a day or two. Then, Monday Will asked how I was feeling, and then made me promise not to run for two weeks. I, of course, blew this off. Then, I started talking to everyone I knew about it.

Just to kill the suspense, I'm taking everyone's advice and taking off two weeks before I start running again.

I didn't realize how much time in my life running takes up. I, now, have nothing to do.

So, today I'm going for a bike ride (Will approved) and I might stop at the gym (lady approved). I was thinking about running a turkey trot in a week, but I wouldn't be able to race it. I doubt my ability to exercise self-control during the race, and I fear I would wind up pushing it on my first run back.

Anyway, looking forward to running, once again, in a week.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Triple A

Our car battery died last night. All in all, it wasn't the worst case scenario, since the car was sitting in our driveway and our urgent trip du jour involved going to the grocery store for a movie and a frozen pizza. Still, it chapped my ass since I really wanted that pizza. The AAA guy is here now, replacing the battery. He is simultaneously challenging my manhood, but I'm too mucous-plugged to care. Let Natalie deal with it.


All this talk about drained energy has served as a cogent pharos for my own lackluster fitness with respect to the impending 26.2 mile voyage. May the fleas of a thousand camels rise up and infest my crotch if I don't do a long run in the next two weeks. It probably won't happen this weekend since there's a race tomorrow, and I may not run at all unless things start looking up flu-wise.

PS - I'm not blaming the vaccine anymore since I got the killed version.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Flu Vaccine

Two days ago, I got my flu vaccine as a convenient add-on to my annual student health assessment. Now I am paying the price for doing so in the form of dripping snot and lost sleep. I remember seeing each number on the alarm clock last night. Sure, I may have been sick before I got the shot, as Natalie pointed out. This is generally my argument when it comes to autism, and there's actually a good chance that's what happened since I just flew home from San Diego. Anyway, vaccines are fucking boring, and I feel like shit. Let's do this. Six miles today.

So we're running a marathon.



Thanks to JR for the video.